OnLive Interested in Xbox 720, PS4

Cloud gaming company OnLive, which has recently released a new app for tablets and mobile devices, is interested in talking with Microsoft and Sony about using its technology on the next generation of consoles.

According to OnLive UK boss Bruce Grove, OnLine already has "the infrastructure" needed to work with the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4.

"If they decide they want to use our technology, that would be a great discussion because we've already got the infrastructure," he said when speaking to Eurogamer. "We know how to do it. There are a lot of things we could bring to the table and they could bring to the table. It would certainly be a discussion we would love to have. It would be very interesting."

Grove wasn't coy about his reasons behind joining with Microsoft and Sony, either.

"For us, it broadens our market. Look at in the same way the Xbox is becoming a media hub. It's becoming more than just a game system. It's just announced with the BBC. In the US it's announced with U-verse for AT&T. They're saying, how do we become more than just this? And this [OnLive] is a service that could quite easily work through their service and would work quite nicely, to be honest."

As for Microsoft's and Sony's interest, "We have conversations with many people," Grove replied.

Many believe the Xbox 720 and PS4 will offer a hybrid solution to games, offering a combination of traditional disc-based games and cloud gaming. Given the recent Xbox 360 dashboard update, which now features cloud storage among other things, these predictions may not be far off.

Luckily, OnLive has built their technology "to fit the growing broadband trend".

"They've also got to satisfy their userbase that isn't necessarily just going to leap on that. They've got a legacy to support as well as dive forward. We had no legacy to support, which means our userbase by nature is only going to be a connected userbase. So we get to move forward. That unshackles us in a way they can't be."

"Hybrid is got to be the way they're thinking about this. But knowing the technology works, seeing it works, they've also got to be thinking, this is going to be the future in some form. Just in the way with Xbox Live and multiplayer, they build them in, but not everyone takes advantage of them. It just becomes another feature that is part of the general gaming quiver."

If Sony does adopt OnLive for the PS4, this wouldn't be Grove's first runaround with the company. At one point, OnLive was running on the PS3, before SOny removed Linux support.

"It was really easy for us to get a client installed and running on it," he revealed. "We never released it, but it was kicking around in our building at the time just so we could prove to ourselves we could do this and make this kind of thing happen."

Matt Liebl
You can follow Senior News Editor Matt Liebl on Twitter @Matt_GZ. He likes games, sports, musicals, and his adorable dog, Wrigley, and his wife.